Games, Comics & Life

“The consensus was that power isn't everything for a console. Too many powerful consoles can't coexist. It's like having only ferocious dinosaurs. They might fight and hasten their own extinction.”- Miyamoto

4cr Plays – Little Inferno

When it’s very cold outside and you have to stay at home, what can you do to have fun? Lets burn some things and find out!

Congratulations on the purchase of your new Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace! In order to stay warm you must burn everything you can find around your house: your toys, your clothes, your furniture.

This game was made by two Kyles (Gabler and Gray) and one Allan (Blomquist), developers who previously worked on World of Goo and Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure. This pedigree brings with it the same art direction and love of puzzles in Little Inferno familiar which was present in both of the previous games.

If it’s not clear by now, Little Inferno tasks you with burning things in your new toy fireplace, and you will burn many things. That is, once you actually get some things to burn. By default your fireplace is empty (except for the odd bug that wants to be fried to a crisp) and you must order new items from the Tomorrow Corporation (the same company that makes the Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace, all the toys you can burn, and Little Inferno the game itself). Conveniently, the catalog is included with your Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace.

Things start out slowly because you don’t have any cash at all. Luckily, the letter that came with your new Fireplace is a great way to get things started. So off you go to burn the envelope and, magically coins appear. Just enough money to order your first item! Just like in real life, once you order an item from the catalog you must wait for it to arrive at your house. When the item arrives, naturally you burn it! More coins will appear, and you can order more items. I imagine you’re getting the gist of the game by now. At one point you are given access to stamps which you get by activating combos, and which can be used to instantly deliver items you’ve ordered. And yes, you read that right: there are combos in this game, fiery combos. For example, burn a Pirate and a bicycle, and you get a short fanfare, more coins, and a stamp or two. There are 99 combos to unlock in the game, and you have to find just over over half of them in order to finish the game.

As the game progresses, you unlock more catalogs by ordering all items in your current one, which in turn unlocks more combos, which gives you more coins, which allows you to buy more items, which unlocks new catalogs. Though you can only have a small number of items at once, you can pay to increase the number of items you can hold at the same time by one, and this can be done several times over as long as you continue to obtain enough number of coins.

All the fiery action is mirrored on the Wii U GamePad, and you can either play on the TV or on the GamePad itself, allowing you to continue burning things even if your TV is unavailable. I played the last half the game without the TV since it was easy to tap and drag the items to the fireplace. I could touch the screen and ignite everything, watching things slowly burn into a crisp until ashes were all that was left, beautiful ashes from the burnt remains of so many toys, Toys burned because I wanted to stay warm… and because it felt great!

I really can’t talk more about the game without spoiling things, since revealing anything else would ruin your experience with this unique and charming indie game.If you would like to spend some time with the jingles and music from the game, you can download the soundtrack for free here.

Little Inferno is one of the must have Wii U games, and a great one to add to your digital collection. While it will probably take you roughly 4-5 hours tobeat, it is a fun ride that you have to experience in order to fully understand it’s charm. Tomorrow Corporation is off to a great start with Little Inferno, and I look forward to their next release.